Changes in version 2.0.0 (2025-06-19)                  

This version introduces a complete overhaul of the package, with
substantial improvements to both the core computational engine and the
user-facing interface.

Computational changes

The main change in this version is the exploitation of the banded
structure of the penalization matrix, which allows for tremendous
savings in both computation time and memory footprint.

  - The package now uses Rcpp and calls directly Lapack functions for
    banded matrices when available.

  - Some additional functions have also been coded using Rcpp. The
    backsolve function for banded matrix was also recoded although it
    already exists in Lapack because the Lapack version overwrites the
    Cholesky factor so a copy has to be made beforehand.

  - Parameter estimation now rely on backward-forward solves from the
    Cholesky factor instead of forming the variance-covariance matrix
    explicitly.

  - By default, only the diagonal of the variance-covariance matrix is
    now computed (which is sufficient for credibility intervals). The
    full matrix can still be retrieved using the newly introduced vcov()
    method if necessary.

User Interface changes

  - The two main functions from earlier versions have been merged into a
    single unified function: WH().

  - Performance iteration and rank reduction are no longer available, as
    they no longer provide meaningful benefits with the new
    implementation. Indeed, the full-rank version is now efficient
    enough to handle several thousand observation points without
    optimization tricks.

Other changes

  - Some minor changes have been made to the example datasets to better
    align the characteristics of the mortality and long-term care
    datasets

                 Changes in version 1.1.2 (2024-08-29)                  

  - Greatly increased tolerance from 1e-6 to 1e-2 to remove a lone
    failing test which only occurs when using MKL BLAS

                 Changes in version 1.1.1 (2024-04-10)                  

  - Increased tolerance to remove a lone failing test which only occurs
    when using MKL BLAS

                 Changes in version 1.1.0 (2023-09-18)                  

  - Made significant changes to the extrapolation methods provided by be
    predict.WH_1d and predict.WH_2d functions. It turns out that the
    formula used for the extrapolation ignored the innovation error
    caused by the prior on the extrapolated region, resulting in smaller
    credibility intervals than they should have been. This now has been
    fixed.

                        Changes in version 1.0.7                        

  - Removed tests of the form expect_equal(f(x), f(x)) after
    confirmation they do not work with MKL BLAS

                        Changes in version 1.0.6                        

  - Further improved test robustness

  - Added tests of the form expect_equal(f(x), f(x)) for testing
    purposes

                        Changes in version 1.0.5                        

  - Further improved tests robustness

                        Changes in version 1.0.4                        

  - Simplified computation of the matrix tUWU by using the crossprod
    function, which should reduce memory usage (by half) and computation
    time (slightly)

  - Fixed an issue with the WH_2d plot and the what = "edf" argument

  - Improved tests robustness

                 Changes in version 1.0.3 (2023-06-14)                  

  - Replaced backquotes by normal quotes in the description field of the
    DESCRIPTION file

                        Changes in version 1.0.2                        

  - Updated the package description to link it to the paper whose
    methods are used in the package

                        Changes in version 1.0.1                        

  - Fixed an issue in the author field of the DESCRIPTION file

                        Changes in version 1.0.0                        

  - Official candidate for CRAN release

                        Changes in version 0.1.0                        

  - Added a NEWS.md file to track changes to the package